"Nothing to stop me from using this wet finger for a highway!"-Aquaman engaging in an unnatural act with the Statue of Liberty, from Aquaman #31 (1967).

August 26, 2009

Prop Stars 38 (Batman 130-133)

It’s a 1960’s Prop Stars day as I take a look at Giant Props employed in stories in the Batman title in issues 130-133. The highlight? The Giant Prop Penny goes on a sea cruise!

209. Giant Birthday Cake

From Batman’s Deadly Birthday in Batman 130 (March 1960), Bill Finger, Dick Sprang and Charles Paris, Batman and Robin walk to mount a three story birthday cake in Batman’s honor at Gotham Stadium little suspecting that the icing is actually plaster left as a trap by some crooks. It’s the finale to a day’s worth of events by a loving populace paying tribute to its adored crime-fighter. Years later those with ticket stubs to the event would wonder how Batman became an urban myth.

Category: True Giant Prop. I want to say it isn’t, but it is a giant-sized version of a normal-sized object and it was created with the purpose of attracting attention. It isn’t even edible, so what else could it be but a Giant Prop cake?

Rating: 5 Giant Pennies. Fighting on a giant cake with plaster as the icing! It’s a tragedy that Bill Finger’s brain wasn’t frozen until science discovers a way to tap its power in perpetuity.

210. Giant Candle

What’s a Giant Prop Birthday Cake without a Giant Prop Candle? From the same scene in the same story, Batman employs the Giant Prop Candle to snuff out the bad guy. He later told Vicki Vale that it was a piece of cake. At least he did in the part of the story that continued in my mind after it really ended.

Category: True Giant Prop.

Rating: 3 Giant Pennies. It doesn’t look like much, but you always score at least a three if you are a Giant Prop used to beat the bad guy.

211. Giant Balloons

From The Three Faces of Batman in Batman 132 (June 1960) by Finger and Moldoff, Batman and Robin battle in the warehouse office of the Gotham Balloon Company.

Category: Not Giant Props. After lengthy internal debate, I have ruled that Giant Inflatable Balloons are not Giant Props. So it is written. So it shall be. Until someone or something convinces me to change my mind.

Rating: N/A

212. Giant Penny

Yes, it’s THE Giant Prop Penny and in Batman 133 (Aug. 1960), The Voyage of the S.S. Batman, Moldoff and an unknown author depicted the Giant Prop Penny as being one of a number of exhibits from the Bat-Cave that Batman was displaying to the world on a boat with Batwings dubbed the S.S. Batman. There are some many levels of gloriousness going on here. The Bat-Cave in a floating museum! Imagine the logistics of getting the Giant Prop Penny and Giant Dinosaur out of the Bat-Cave and on to the S.S. Batman! They had me hooked at S.S. Batman.

Category: True Giant Prop.

Rating: 5 Giant Pennies. I love anytime the Giant Penny gets to play a role in a story and to think that there is a universe where all people, rich and poor, young and old, sober and drunk, all got to get a first-hand gander at the Giant Prop Penny is to imagine utopia.

213. Giant Jack-In-The-Box

From the same story and same floating museum, comes this exhibit, which Joker unsuccessfully used in an escape attempt. I marvel at the logistics of the Silver Age. What level of criminal genius was Joker to leave a Giant Jack-In-The-Box at just the right spot in the middle of the street? Only the Joker knew Batman well enough to ascertain the exact spot in the middle of a street where pursuit will close in.

Category: Not a Giant Prop. Although this is a giant-sized version of an ordinary object, I was created specifically to be an escape gimmick.

Rating: N/A

214. Giant Flashlight

Still in the S.S. Batman saga, here’s an unusual sight.

No, no, no. The Giant prop Flashlight isn’t what’s unusual. Heck, it isn’t even the first Giant Prop Flashlight in a Batman story, the first showed up in Batman 90 (March 1955) and, like this one, had a functioning light beam. What is unusual is that the scene involving a Giant Prop takes place outside Gotham City. Readers are never told where, but the Tip-Top Flashlight Company is, but the scen takes place in a port of call for the S.S. Batman, where crooks make a fake Bat-Signal out of the Giant Prop Flashlight to lure Batman and Robin away from the boat.

Category: True Giant Prop.

Rating: 4 Giant Pennies. A Giant Prop used to make a Bat-Signal. Fun! More fun in the next panel when the Giant Prop plummets to the ground, narrowly missing hitting the Dynamic Duo.

215. Giant LP Record

This scene, from another story in Batman 133, is a flashback panel to an earlier adventure featuring a Giant Prop. The original story with this scene was in Detective Comics 267 (May 1959). The continuity flashback was unusual in the day, but Finger and Moldoff obviously thought that the visual was worth a rerun. But don’t fret Giant Propophiles. There are plenty of visual goodness in this story, Batwoman’s Publicity Agent, another Bat-Mite instant classic.

Category: True Giant Prop.

Rating: 5 Giant Pennies. That’s what I gave the scene the first time it was depicted. It hasn’t gotten any less fun to look at.

216. Giant Reel to Reel Recorder

Still flashbacking, Bat-Mite recalls how he impishly used a Giant Prop Cassette Recorder (it was like an iPod in the same way that a mule is like a personal jet pack kids) to amuse himself.

No longer flashbacking, but still in the same story, Batman and Robin capture some thugs while a Giant Prop Camera sits in the background atop the Ace Camera Company building.

Category: True Giant Prop. And the fourth use of a Giant Prop Camera, leading to the inevitable question – which Giant Prop form has been used the most (not counting the Giant Prop Penny)? Here’s the leaderboard so far:
1) Giant Globes: 6 times
2) Giant Camera: 4 times
3) Giant Record/Turntable: 3 times

Rating: 2 Giant Pennies. A Giant Prop Camera should always have a flash bulb going off to blind someone. This one is just decoration.

218. Giant Tools

Still in the Bat-Mite story, here’s a scene where Batman, Robin, Batwoman and the crooks are about to fight on a battleground of giant tools.

Category: Not Giant Props. It breaks my heart that this scene doesn’t involve Giant Prop Tools, but the truth is that the tools are ordinary size and Bat-Mite has shrunk the combatants down to a small size to make the fight more interesting. Say what you will about Bat-Mite, but his instincts for what was entertaining and what wasn’t were always spot on.

Rating: N/A

219. Giant Bellows

The same scene sees Bat-Mite using his posterior to blow over the trio of heroes. Sure Batman has suffered a lot of indignities over his career, but being put out of action by a gust of air generated by Bat-Mite’s butt has to be one of the best.

August 20, 2009

Back Issue! 27 (2008)

Yes, even in the age of the internet, I still find comic-focused magazines to be compelling and worthwhile. Are the contents of a good fanzine different than that of a good blog? Often not – they are all labors of love by avid comic book fans. But each format has its own strengths. Blogs are far better at timely and humor-oriented approaches. But for in-depth looks at creators and/or characters, give the edge to fanzines where wordier output is easier to absorb than by scrolling and flipping through 25 screens.

I’ve got three current favorite fanzines:

1) The Aquaman Chronicles, an infrequently published, but thorough look at Aquaman by dedicated fan John Schwirian;

2) Alter Ego, edited by Roy Thomas and focusing on the Golden Age through the 1960’s; and

3) The subject of today’s entry, Michael Eury’s Back Issue!, which focuses on the 1970’s and 1980’s

The theme of TwoMorrows' Back Issue 27 (2008) was “comic book royalty”, making Aquaman a fitting cover subject.

And the Aquaman article, by head honcho of the afore-mentioned first-rate Aquaman Chronicles fanzine thoroughly covers the publishing and character histories of the Sea King in the 1970’s and 1980’s, the former decade encompassing a high point for the otherwise often banal mess that has been the Sea King’s solo adventure histories the past 28 years. Schwirian’s overview covers the events in entertaining detail with ample quotes from a large number of the creators involved.

A sad truth revealed in the portion of the article covering the late 1980’s is that DC had no overall direction and that writers were permitted to swoop in, write stories without attention to the character’s past or future, and swoop out. From a fan’s standpoint, that’s generally a bad thing. On the other hand, allowing novel approaches to characters creates a chance at sparking greater commercial interest in the character. So I suppose it is a necessary evil. It sure didn’t work out too well for Aquaman though.

Aqua-fact I never knew: Alan Davis was initially assigned the art job for the Pozner mini-series, but was moved to Batman and the Outsiders which Dick Giordano thought was a better match for Davis’ talents.

In the interest of equal sea royalty time, there is also a retrospective of Sub-Mariner’s 1970s and 1980s career. I’m a big Aquaman fan, but even I can’t deny that many aspects of Aquaman have been Sub-Mariner rip-offs, particularly Aquaman’s personality since the 1980’s. The short-tempered and arrogant shtick is one that Subby has always worn well and Aquaman poorly.

But the article that best fits the comic book royalty theme has to be the dual interview of Mike Barr and Brian Bolland regarding the Treadmill-indexed Camelot 3000. Back Issue! excels at this type of material that is equivalent to the “special features” of a DVD.

Villains can be royalty also, so Back Issue! 27 devotes an article to the royalty aspect of the Dr. Doom character. For my money, any time a story line takes Doom too far away from his role as despot of a European nation, a mistake has been made. The piece is a great look at one of comic’s most intriguing super-villains.

There’s a feature on Arion, a character who wasn’t content with his own mediocre sword and sorcery title. No. He had to try and become a big player in the Aquaman mythos. He’s a character I thought could never be done well. But lo and behold he recently made an effective foe for Superman (a character who has enjoyed some fantastic story-telling in all of his solo titles for the past few years). Glad someone else recognized that a guy who would drag Aquaman down with Atlantean magic stories was truly evil.

There is also a feature on real life comic book royalty, Jack “King” Kirby, with short quotes from 15 other creators on why Kirby was King. It’s the first article in the 27 issues of Back issue! I’ve read which I can call inadequate. It’s too short to even cover the surface of what it is trying to accomplish. And 15 random creators? Again, that can’t even superficially cover the ground the article is aiming for. Even if a more appropriate 15 creators had been chosen, short blurbs, many of them just 5 or 6 lines, are not enough to do justice to the topic.

The Kirby piece is followed by an article on a comic book that might have risen to better heights had it been published at a different time, Night Force. Despite moody Gene Colan art and an intriguing premise, writer Marv Wolfman failed to deliver the same horror mojo the pair did with the longer running Tomb of Dracula. The article details a difference of marketing strategy opinion between Wolfman and DC that may have caused the book to be put on the chopping block before enough narrative momentum could be established in a unique horror title on a rack dominated by super-heroes. I remember this series as a big let down for failing to generate that momentum by the 14th issue. Article author Jim Kingman is more favorable in his reminiscing, but we can both agree that this title had great potential.

Finally, there’s an article by one of the comic blogging world’s most innovative writers, Robby Reed of the sorely missed Dial B For Blog on how Captain Marvel Junior inspired Elvis Presley. Speculative fun!

August 17, 2009

Prop Stars 37 (Batman 125-129)

Today’s Prop Stars will cover the last few late 1950’a Batman comics, specifically the stories from Batman 125-129 (1959-1960) that haven’t already been featured. It also uncovers a subtle bit of 1960 DCU continuity. Of course, that continuity is Giant Prop-related.

200. Giant Golden Goose and Golden Eggs and Vase

This one comes from perhaps the best title for a Batman tale in his storied history, The Secret Life of Bat-Hound from Batman 125 (August 1959) by Bill Finger, Sheldon Moldoff and Charles Paris.
In this scene, Stacey’s Department Store was celebrating its golden anniversary with, what else, an exhibit of gold items. Who could have guessed that a gang that called itself the Midas Mob would be drawn to this display?

Category: True Giant Props.

Rating: 5 Giant Pennies. Giant Props made out of solid gold? Darned straight. In Gotham City, a business was only as successful as the gaudiness of its Giant Props.

201. Giant Batman Lighthouse

Eat your heart out Statue of Liberty. In Batman 126 (Sept. 1959), The Batman Lighthouse, Finger, Moldoff and Paris set a story around Gotham City’s own Batman Lighthouse. But you probably guessed that from the title.

Category: Not a Giant Prop. As glorious as it is, there is no way this is a Giant Prop. It’s a decorative lighthouse. But it does raise an inquiry for another day. Just how many architectural tributes to Batman were erected in Gotham City?

Rating: N/A

202. Giant Glass Bottles and Tubes

From another story by the same team in Batman 126, The Menace of the Firefly, Batman, Robin and Batwoman fight some thugs in Gotham Glassworks, a factory which appears to gain its income manufacturing Giant Props as seen by the array of giant bottles, tubes and other things made of glass.

Category: True Giant Props. The reader isn’t told what these giant items were manufactured for, but absent proof that there was a legitimate, non-prop need for such oversized bottles and tubes, I’m calling them Giant Props. As some guy in a funny robe once kind of said, I don’t know how to define a Giant prop, but I know one when I see one.

Rating: 3 Giant Pennies. The items themselves are dull, but I enjoyed the see-through aspect of the battle.

203. Giant Books

In Batman 127 (Oct. 1959), Batman’s Super Partner by Finger, Dick Sprang and Paris, Batman, Robin and the Eagle team-up to fight the Joker at Gotham’s Book Fair. In this scene, Joker tries to lose himself in a good book. Hey – don’t give me that look – it was the Joker’s gag. I’m just the innocent blogporter.

The Eagle you ask? It was a super-powered Alfred in disguise. How Super-Alfred didn’t take ove the strip in the manner of Popeye in Thimble Theatre, I’m at a loss to explain. I’d love to talk more about this boffo tale, but I must remember to stay on Giant Prop mission.

Category: True Giant Props.

Rating: 5 Giant Pennies. Not only are they giant copies of classic books, but the chase scene uses them directly. A fun panel.

204. Giant Net

In the same saga, this Giant Prop Net on a billboard for government bonds was used by the Eagle in an attempt to capture the Joker. Instead, the Eagle inadvertently stopped Batman and Robin from making the capture. It’s easy to forget, but Alfred was basically a bumbling buffoon until after his death and revival in the 1960’s.

Category: True Giant Prop.

Rating: 3 Giant Pennies. The net isn’t that extraordinary, but I am awarding an extra penny for the fact that even the U.S. government had to get into the Giant Prop game to catch the Gotham City consumers’ attention.

205. Giant Camera

In Batman 128 (Dec. 1959), The Million Dollar Puzzle, by Finger, Moldoff and Paris, the Gotham Gazette took the idea of having a Giant Prop atop your office to a new level, installing a Giant Prop display of the tools of its trade in the building’s lobby. The scene may look “unrealistic”, but since the first story in the issue featured Batman as an interplanetary lawman and the third had Batman as a babysitter singing Rock-A-Bye Baby, this battle in front of a Giant Prop camera was as real as this issue got.

Category: True Giant Prop. This is the third sighting of a Giant Prop Camera, the other two being Batman 81 (Feb. 1954) and 104 (Dec. 1956).Rating: 4 Giant Pennies. Batman, knowing from experience that Giant Prop Cameras always have a working flash, uses the Prop to blind the bad guys. With Giant Props handy at fight scenes, who needs Robin?

206. Giant Spool of Thread

Later in the same story, the Dynamic Duo find themselves at the Thurber Thread Factory, surrounded by giant spools of thread.

Category: True Giant Prop. I’ll confess that although I fashion myself as a renaissance man, I know nothing about the thread factory business. Are giant spools of thread used? Or are these decorative items in a lobby display? Fortunately, if you keep reading you’ll find an entry from the next issue of Batman which resolves the issue.

Rating: 1 Giant Penny. Mere background use.

207. Giant Green Anchor

From Batman 129 (Feb. 1960), The Man From Robin’s Past by Finger, Moldoff and Paris, saw Batman save Robin from being crushed by a giant anchor that was on display at Gotham City’s Green Anchor Nightclub. Was it a criminal plot or where giant Gotham objects gaining sentience and trying to take Robin’s place as Batman’s number one assistant?

Category: Not a Giant Prop. This project has required a lot of judgment calls, but I’m calling this a regular, albeit large, anchor that the nightclub put on display, not a Giant Prop of an anchor.

Rating: N/A

208. Giant Sewing Machine and Spools

Also from Batman 129, Merriweather Jones – Crime Prophet by Jerry Coleman, Sprang and Paris comes a story featuring a fight scene at a Gotham City sewing machine company. Of course the company has a Giant Prop Sewing Machine on display enabling Batman to make the obligatory sewing circle joke.

Category: True Giant Prop. And this resolves the issue of why the thread company was making Giant Prop Spools in the previous issue. This is a detail-oriented piece of continuity that many fans probably think never happened in DC comics in 1960.

Rating: 5 Giant Pennies. The continuity! The sewing puns (“get Robin with the bobbin”)! The ridiculousness of a giant sewing machine! This scene has everything the connoisseur looks for in a Giant Prop vignette.

August 12, 2009

Adventure Comics 431-436 (1974)

My Adventure Comics indexing reaches one of the most famous, albeit brief, runs of the underappreciated series, the Spectre!

The Spectre’s 10-issue stint as the headliner was riveting and best remembered for its “ahead of its time” vengeance-focused stories and depiction of gruesome ends for the generally fungible villains the Spectre encountered. Writer Michael Fleisher’s Spectre was a merciless instrument of homicidal wrath against any human who dared to murder another. The tales were revenge fantasies told in glorious comic book horror style.

I only got one of the issues off the stands. It was the first in the series. I would have purchased more, but I never saw another one on a newsstand/drugstore rack and wasn't able to find the remainder until the later 1970’s when a comic book shop opened within bicycling distance. Did DC not distribute many copies of the book to newsstands and drug stores or, as is more likely, did savvy older kids snap up these “water cooler worthy” copies as quick as they came in? I’m guessing the latter, but never discount the power of the vagaries of distribution in the newsstand/drugstore era of the 1970’s.

Here’s a look at the first six issues, representing the 1974 Adventure Comics. Soon I’ll cover the 1975 issues, along with the last three scripts, which were not illustrated and published until 1988.

The Wrath of the Spectre! from Adventure Comics 431 by Fleisher and Jim Aparo was the type of comic that burns permanent marks in the memory of a ten-year-old boy. In this comic, a super-hero kills 3 bad guys! Generic, indistinguishable bad guys, but they become corpses in gruesome fashion! It was unheard of to readers of my era. Forget Batman, Superman and Flash. What kid wouldn't want the powers of the Spectre?

The debut story established a formula that many of the issues followed. Some bad guys callously murder innocents and/or police. Spectre readily finds each of the villains, speaks some scary words and slays them in a creatively and often ironically gruesome fashion. The end.

The lone flaw in the stories was the lack of tension in the battle between good and evil. There was suspense, in the form of what grisly fate the bad guy(s) would meet. But there is no apprehension that the Spectre is ever going to fail to bring the largely ordinary villains to meet their makers. Fleisher crafted bad guys who were largely kill-crazy ordinary criminals and worked with Aparo in producing one after another after another in a series of visually captivating gruesome ends. As time went on, Fleisher did try to spice up the level of macabre in the foes. Still, there was no selling readers that guys who could animate mannikins (sic) were a match for the Spectre. Readers, like me, enjoyed these for the artfully captivating way the stories were told, not because we ever feared for the fate of the Spectre in his battles.

Despite my high praise for these stories, it is probably best that Spectre’s tenure was brief, because watching Spectre wipe out bad guys without breaking a ghostly sweat would have worn thin. Not that Fleisher didn’t provide a couple of compelling subplots after the first few issues. The tragic romance of Gwen Sterling, who loved Jim Corrigan, was a good one, but again one that would have also worn thin before long. Likewise the subplot involving crime reporter Earl Crawford, who was repulsed by the Spectre’s lack of respect for humanity’s justice system was refreshing – a snoopy reporter who was arguably in the moral right instead of being the unwitting butt of the super-hero’s secret identity. But it was a subplot that also could have become irksome if left unresolved too long.

Fleisher’s Spectre didn’t last long enough to wear out its welcome. These stories were great fun to read in the 1970's and hold up with no need to apologize to modern sensibilities. They deliver a sense of wonder about the main character and his world. I consider them required reading for anyone interested in the history and variety of super-hero comic book stories. This was an odd hiccup of dark story-telling in the time between the end of EC Comics and the Dark Knight grim and gritty trend.

Even the letters column is a joy in the debut issue. In response to a reader asking how Spectre can be the lead in a series since he died in JLA a few years earlier (true), editor Joe Orlando replies in an unburdened by continuity manner that super-hero comics can no longer get away with – Orlando tells the reader that the “more logical” option is to think of these as adventures that took place before the Spectre died.

Capturing the spirit of the sense of wonder in these stories is best done with a two or three sentence recap of the plot and a rundown of the villains slain by the Spectre and how each met his end.

Adventure Comics 431: Four bad guys rob an armored car, killing the guards and one of their own in the process. The Spectre handles the other three:

1) Tricks bad guy number one into driving car off cliff and dying in fiery explosion;

2) Melting the flesh of bad guy number two as though it were wax, all while summing up the raison d’etre of Fleisher’s Spectre

3) Evaporates all but the skeleton of bad guy number three.

Adventure Comics 432: A businessman hires three assassins to kill his partner. They succeed and kill the businessman when they fear he will talk to the police. The Spectre handles the three assassins:

4) Snipped in half by giant scissors (the assassin had a day job in a hair salon);

5) Turned to sand;

6) Aged to die a wrinkly old crone (the assassin was a beautiful model)

Adventure Comics 433: I can't find my copy of this issue. I am certain I have it, but it has eluded my grasp as though some ghostly presence is trying to thwart my reporting. I do know that there is at least one Spectre work of homicidal art:

7) Spiritualist turned to glass in the middle of a séance;

Adventure Comics 434: A department store mannequin maker has the ability to bring his creations to life and sends them on homicidal rampages because his is enraged that nobody cares about the feelings of mannequins (is this inspired motivation for a character or is Fleisher nodding to the readers that why villains are doing what they are doing is inconsequential in this series?).

8) Turned into a mannequin himself and burned to death in pile of burning mannequins;

Adventure Comics 435: The Grandetti Boys are on a crime spree, although readers see only the tail end of an unspecified crime that involved murdering police and innocent bystanders. Spectre finds and disposes of them all:

Is there a band out there willing to turn those screams into a hit song called “Song of the Spectre”? If so, I hope I get a backstage pass for the big tour.

Most of these issues also had a back-up story. Here’s the rundown:

Adventure Comics 431: Is A Snerl Human? By Shelly Mayer and Alex Toth. This may look like a standard variety “twist-ending” sci-fi tale, but the craft with which it is pulled off is remarkable. Toth was the quintessential cantankerous genius. He didn’t have the temperament to stay long on any one project, but the brief pieces of work he made always stand out in the crowd. Skeates and Toth tell a delightfully cynical tale of human nature.

Adventure Comics 432: A Captain Fear installment by Steve Skeates and Alex Nino As I noted before, this series never hooked me. This installment is no different. Beautiful to look at it, but with no plot or character substance.

Adventure Comics 434 had no back-up but readers got treated to an art team of Aparo and Frank Thorne for the full-length Spectre story.

Adventure Comics 435-436 featured an Aquaman back-up, including Black Manta’s dabbling in the squid rustling field, and an Aquaman robot. I talked about it in my Aquaman indexing here.

This issue also featured a letter from a reader in Ohio expressing disgust with the Spectre series, deeming it “repugnant to [his] moral values. Oh you cranky buckeye. There were plenty of moral issues to think about in these stories. Was Spectre immoral for slaying callous killers? Was Earl Crawford immoral for fighting for the rights of hardened killers? Was Gwen Sterling immoral for loving a homicidal ghost? Was Jim Corrigan immoral for lying to mortals and treating them with contempt even when they were innocents and/or on the side of good? Fleisher never answered the questions. He just let them play out for the reader to puzzle over.

Fleisher and Aparo’s Spectre was tremendous comics. Will it win the coveted Comic Treadmill best run of Adventure Comics? The competition is fierce and there is still a lot of ground to cover before the series’ cancellation. But stay tuned Treadmillers.

August 10, 2009

Prop Stars 36 (Batman 77-83, 85)

The last few Prop Stars entries have covered late 1950’s Batman comics, so this time out I’m going to mix things up and cover issues 77 through 83 (1953-54) (except for one story from Batman 81, which was already covered in this installment of the series).

I’ll also throw in a Giant Prop from Batman 85 that I missed when I covered that issue (the image got filed in the wrong folder in our otherwise flawless filing system here at Comic Treadmill headquarters).

189. Giant Ball Bearing

From Batman 77 (July 1953), The Crime Predictor, by Edmond Hamilton, Bob Kane, Lew Schwartz and Charles Paris, Batman uses this giant ball bearing to take down the bad guy.

Category: Not a Giant Prop. It may look the part, but Hamilton, anticipating this far future inquiry of mine, made it clear in the story that the Ball Bearing Company manufactured ball bearings of all sizes, each designed for practical use. Of course, this raises the question whether giant ball bearings were only produced to be parts of Giant Props. But I advise against thinking about that too much.

Rating: N/A

190. Giant Cash Register

Bill Finger and the same art team delivered a Giant Prop Cash Register in the second story from Batman 77, , The Secret Star. In Gotham City, the robbery rate for expositions was 100%, with this victim being the United Business Machines Industrial Diamond Exhibit. As you can see, Robin hits the No Sale button on the Giant Prop Cash Register without ever once doubting that the Prop will actually functionally properly. And Robin’s faith was justified as the drawer swings out to whack a trio of thugs.

Category: True Giant Prop. This is the second time we’ve seen a Giant Prop Cash Register, the first being Batman 62 (Jan. 1951).

Rating: 4 Giant Pennies. One penny per crook beaten plus a bonus for beating them with the “No Sale” function.

191. Giant Record and Turntable

In the same story, there’s a two-panel throwaway scene in an unidentified facility. Why is there a Giant Prop Turntable with a Giant Prop Record that can play on it? If you have to ask the question, you have not yet achieved the zen of the Giant Prop.

Category: True Giant Prop. Later on, Detective Comics 267 (May 1959) will feature a Giant Prop Record and Detective Comics 498 (Jan. 1981) will feature another Giant Prop Turntable. Perhaps it’s the same Giant Prop Turntable many years later. We’ll only know more on this subject when DC acquiesces to an ongoing series starring Giant Props.

Rating: 5 Giant Pennies. Crooks escaping on a tilted record about to drop on to a turntable? The word fun was invented for scenes like this.

192. Giant Coffee Percolator

In Batman 79 (Nov. 1953), Bride of Batman by David Vern, Dick Sprang and Paris, Robin uses the lid of a Giant Prop Coffee Percolator in the Electrical Appliance Company Showroom to capture some fleeing hoods.

Category: True Giant Prop.

Rating: 4 Giant Pennies. Robin knows that the way to score high is to use the Giant Prop constructively in a fight scene.

193. Giant Vacuum Cleaner

The Electrical Expo also had a functioning vacuum cleaner prop, which Batman used to bag a couple of bad guys. Sometimes the Giant Props made the caped crusader’s job too easy.

Category: True Giant Prop.

Rating: 3 Giant Pennies.

194. Giant Ice Cream Cone

In Batman 80 (Dec. 1953-Jan. 1954), The Joker’s Movie Crimes, by Finger, Sprang and Paris, this film clip of a giant ice cream cone falling on him inspired the Joker’s plot du jour. This is the third, and earliest, sighting of a Giant Prop Ice Cream Cone, the other two being Batman 121 (1959) and Detective Comics 504 (1981).

Category: True Giant Prop. The fact that it looks like the Giant Prop had real ice cream atop the cone is not a disqualifier. We don’t learn why the Giant Prop ice cream cones were created, but I’m going with the “it’s a Giant Prop unless proven otherwise” stance here. That said, they could have been genuine ice cream cones for an inter-dimensional race of ice-cream loving giants. It was the Silver Age after all.

Rating: 5 Giant Pennies. Delicious and capable of subduing the Joker.

195. Giant Camera

In Batman 81 (Feb. 1954), The Boy Wonder Confesses! by Vern, Moldoff and Stan Kaye, the Dynamic Duo fought Mr. Camera, who really needs to team up with the Clock King one of these days and form a club of villains who wear objects they are named after as headpieces.
Naturally, the fight spilled into the annual Camera Show at Gotham Palace where the combatants strutted their stfuf atop a Giant Prop, what else, camera.

Category: True Giant Prop. There was also a Giant Prop Camera in Batman 104 (1956).

Rating: 4 Giant Pennies. High score awarded due to theme adherence.

196. Giant Film Projector and Reels

Later in the same story, Batman and Robin track Mr. Camera to his hideout, which is tricked out with a Giant Prop Film Projector.

Category: True Giant Prop. Again, it is unclear whether this projector was created to be utilized, but I will tolerate no argument contrary to a ruling that this object fits the spirit of the Giant Prop.

Rating: 3 Giant Pennies.

197. Giant Penny

The Giant Penny from the Batcave shows up in the background of many Batman tales and ordinarily doesn’t merit mention for purposes of this list. However, exceptions will be made where the Giant Prop Penny plays an important role in the plot. Such was the case in The Duplicate Batman! from Batman 83 (April 1954) by Vern, Moldoff and Bill Elder. In this story, a Batman imposter gives himself away by being too weak to move the Giant Prop Penny as easily as the real Batman can.

Category: True Giant Prop.

Rating: 5 Giant Pennies. How can I not give the Giant Prop Penny the full complement of pennies? And how cool is it that ordinary men struggle to move it, but Batman can do so with ease. That rings of King Arthur and Excalibur!

198. Giant Bowling Ball and Pins

From another story in Batman 83, this cover featured image depicted an actual scene where Batman had to use his formidable bowling skill to save Robin from a deathtrap. It happened in The Testing of Batman! by Hamilton, Sprang and Paris. One might question how a millionaire playboy developed expert skill in a blue collar person’s sport. Bowling death traps seem more up the Thing’s alley, as it were. But let’s move on before I further mix my super-hero universes.

Category: True Giant Prop. The whole thing was designed as a test of psychological skills turned into a way for a bad guy to learn how to commit a crime, but the important thing to take away from that is that in Gotham City, the field of psychology employed Giant Props.

Rating: 5 Giant Pennies. A Prop Bowling Alley that gets used and is a death trap to boot? Proptastic!

199. Giant Magnifying Glass

Finally, here’s a Giant Prop I inadvertently omitted from my entry covering Batman 85’s (Aug. 1954) Batman—Clown of Crime by Vern, Moldoff and Paris. In this visual masterpiece, Joker (in the Batman’s body) is using a Giant Prop Magnifying Glass atop the Acme Magnifying Lens Company’s skyscraper office. You might question how a magnifying lens company gets enough business to justify its own skyscraper. I have six words that readily answer that question – Wile E. Coyote, Acme’s best customer.

Category: True Giant Prop. It’s a classic Giant Prop representing the company housed in the building.

Rating: 5 Giant Pennies. A Giant Prop with a stairs platform built so that it could be used by the Joker in Batman’s body to try and reveal Batman’s secret identity to the world? Comic books are grand indeed.

August 06, 2009

Does This Explain Why We Mock Spores?

Hi Treadmillers. I seized an opportunity for a last minute island vacation with my favorite wife while the kids are away at camp. So there'll be no regular entries until next week.

But I didn't forget you guys and gals. Here for your certain amusement is Charlie Brown and two of the forgotten Peanuts cast proving that they would have made great bloggers had the form existed at the time.

August 03, 2009

The Brave and the Bold 64, 69, 74, 119, 145 (1966-67, 1975, 1978)

Hail to an old friend – the Brave and the Bold indexing entry! Long time Treadmillers will recall that I completed my run of this comic well over a year ago. But I have since picked up two missing issues as well as the first volume of Showcase Presents: The Brave and the Bold. So, you can look forward to these sporadically appearing fill in the gap entries.

Much as I enjoy most of Haney's unique style, the three early stories in the Showcase were undeniably wretched. However, the later two stories were examples of how Haney (with Aparo's help) had honed his ability to tell fantastic done in one tales with a disparate and constantly changing cast, anchored only by a character Haney came to own in a way no other writer of the character has, Batman. The premises of the stories weren't any better or worse, but the improved art and the tighter adherence to always furthering the plot resulted in some great tales.

But first, here’s a DC editorial response to the inquiry why B&B stories ignored the Earth-1 and Earth-2 distinctions. It’s from the letters page of issue 119 and displays a creative attitude that starkly contrasts with modern day sensibilities:

Why do we avoid the Earth One/Two theme? Simply to make our stories clear and concise for readers unfamiliar with that device, initiated years ago to satisfy the time paradox. If we can offer an entertaining story minus that expedient, we find comfort in knowing we’ve achieved our purpose. Entertainment, that’s the name of the game, not employing convenient, nitty-gritty gimmicks!

The Brave and the Bold 64, Batman Versus Eclipso, was a cheat. B&B is a team-up title. This story is simply Batman fighting Eclipso. There is no team-up. And Eclipso is third-rate of the three villains in the story. So much for being a co-headliner.

Eclipso is billed as hero and villain in one man, but Haney ignores the conflict at the heart of the character to deliver a memorably bad story of Batman turning horn dog for Marcia Monroe a.k.a. Queen Bee.

Which isn’t to say that this story doesn’t deliver value in the sense of it being wonderfully bad. The doomed romance of Batman and playgirl/villainess Monroe is riveting. The two meet when the spoiled Monroe was causing a public nuisance. Batman’s response? A little S&M for the cameras. Imagine a real life Batman. Then imagine a YouTube clip of Batman spanking a Paris Hilton type. Viral wouldn't even begin to describe it.

Everything else in the story after that scene was simply bonus.

But it wasn’t the inane romance plot alone that made this among Haney’s worst efforts. There’s plenty more yuckiness, particularly Mortimer’s art. Mortimer drew many beautiful covers in his career, but his interior work in the 1960's was uninspired.

For example, cutaway schematics are one of the splendid features of super-hero comics. But Mortimer draws the lamest cutaway schematic in the history of super-hero comics.

No sweat was spilled in the making of that panel.

In the finale, Eclipso returns to Bruce Gordon’s body in broad daylight while all eyes are trained on Bruce Gordon, but nobody notices. Apparently even the fictional characters in the story stopped caring about events by the end. I don’t blame them.

There is something genuinely remarkable about this story though. It is a Bob Haney B&B story that contains a continuity footnote! The footnote informs readers that the only person not in the story who knows Eclipso’s secret identity is Prince Ra-Man, Mind Master. A continuity note in a Haney story? I am now convinced that the whole purpose of this story was to baffle bloggers 43 years in the future.
I’ve always said that Haney was a genius ahead of his time.

In long (I’m way passed the point of being able to use “in short” credibly), Haney wrote a tremendous mess of an incoherent story with three different foes and the only person Batman actually teams with is Queen Bee. Later in his B&B career, Haney would still have problems with consistent characterization, but his story-telling became far less cluttered than this clunker. Frenzied activity in a super-hero story is swell. But in the end there has to be a thread connecting the activity and this story, unlike Haney’s later B&B’s, lacked that thread.

The worst part of this B&B story? It lacks the requisite Friendly Farewell!!!! The best readers get is this issue is this adieu in which Batman tells Queen Bee farewell, even though she fled into comic book limbo four pages ago.

A quick word about Eclipso. How he got to be considered a headliner baffles me. The original concept – noble Dr. Bruce Gordon becomes the evil Eclipso anytime there is an eclipse of the sun is unworkable as the premise of the lead character in an ongoing series. Although I’ll admit it is better than my original creation – Millennium Man, whose powers only appear for 12 hours at the end of each millennium.

Eclipso is a potentially strong tragic villain and had he been introduced as a recurring foe/supporting cast member in another character's series, he may have fared better (I think that in the 1980’s Bruce Gordon was made a supporting character in Green Lantern, but the GL stories at that time were the very definition of lackluster so it wasn’t a fair test of the character’s usefulness). The day may yet come when Eclipso is turned into a compelling character, but it hasn’t happened yet.

The next two Haney Batman outings were no picnic either. For the full details, check here.

In issue 67 Batman teamed with the Flash in a below average story and in issue 68 he teamed with Metamorpho in the second worst story of the entire run. Here are the details.

The Brave and the Bold 69, War of the Cosmic Avenger pitted Batman and Green Lantern in a rematch against the Time Commander. Round One of this match-up was in B&B 59, the first Batman team-up of the title.

Like the first round, the rematch extensively featured the Whirly Bat. Haney must have thought a flying guest star required Batman to have his own “wings” to level the playing field. Many of the stories flaws can be ignored by just letting the eye linger on the Whirly Bat scenes. Disagree? Hey, you’re talking to a reader who worships the Whirly Bat so much that I created an index of its appearances. I love stories with Whirly Bat visuals.

Again, this tale is not as rock solid nor nearly as much fun as Haney’s later efforts in the title would prove to be even though GL gets a panel of dialog wherein he describes a fight between Batman and the Time Commander thusly:

POW! ZONK! POW!

Still, this is an entertaining, albeit erratically plotted, tale pitting Green Lantern and Batman against two sufficient menaces, the Time Commander and the Time Commander’s Frankenstein monster, Cosmo.
Sadly, this story also lacks a true Friendly Farewell as the story ends with four characters staring into four different directions, an apt visual for the Haney’s often disjointed early era B&B tales.

Issues 72-73 were non-Batman team-ups, making the next missing issue covered by the Showcase collection, Brave & Bold 74, Rampant Run The Robots! by Haney, Andru and Esposito, teaming Batman with the Metal Men.

I'm no Metal Men fan, but bias aside, this is an unattractive comic book story, both visually and narratively. The opening is wince-inducing, where Haney explicitly writes Batman to behave and banter like Spider-Man and then segueways into a full-page spread of a robot convention where the dialog goes like this:

Klang: Hello R4573. Haven’t seen you since we were both experimental models! Now there are robots galore!

R4573: Greetings Klang! You haven’t changed a bit. Isn’t this Expo a gas?

While the convention is in town, a robot crime spree ensues and the tension of the story turns on whether the Metal Men are with the side of law and order or have turned bad. Tension is too strong a word actually, as the story is full of nonsensical scenes that thwart any attempt to create suspense or keep the reader’s full attention. Andru and Esposito were generally an under-rated artistic team, but they weren’t the right guys for this story. Their robots are ugly and mind-numbing.

When robots aren’t visually awe-inspiring, a super-hero comic book crime has been committed.

The story ends when Batman uses a karate chop to destroy the main bad robot. Not only was the robot dull to look at, he was made of cheap parts.

Let’s cut to the metal on flesh fetish friendly farewell and then move on to see how Haney had honed his craft nine years later.

In Brave & Bold 119, Bring Back Killer Krag, Haney, along with Aparo, who deserves equal credit with Haney for the taut storytelling that typified B&B in the 1970’s, paired Batman with Man-Bat in a fantastic thriller of a story in which the two lead characters were nothing like they were in any other DC comic book title but showed readers a great time in a battle against evil. It was the golden age of B&B.

An assassin has escaped Gotham City and is hiding in a South American “voodoo dictatorship”, said dictator known as the “Black Napoleon”. Batman travels to “illegally” extradite the killer. Man-Bat goes to do the same, but with the motive of claiming the reward money to aid in his quest to become a greater crime fighter than Batman.

As I said, Aparo deserve co-credit for the success of this title. Compared to the staid efforts of Mortimer or the awkward Andru work, Aparo brings dynamic and creative visual approaches. Here, Aparo shows the passage of time in this minor sequence, making the triviality of the moment more interesting by the use of perspective and panel lines.

The above is pretty much the only slow moment of this tight story. Batman and Man-Bat have a series of thrill-packed encounters, each furthering the quest. The excitement involves fisherman mistaking Batman for a giant frog!, Batman versus a great white shark, Man-Bat versus vampire bats, Man-Bat foolishly getting two CIA agents killed by voodoo thugs and Batman becoming a Batman-Bat. Throughout, Haney highlights the underlying conflict of the differing motives of the two heroes – justice (Batman) and monetary gain (Man-Bat) – injecting further tension in the already exciting showdown with the evil dictator.

Despite their differences, Batman-Bat and Man-Bat have a friendly farewell.

The final issue covered by this fill-in-the-gaps entry is The Brave and the Bold 145 (1978), A Choice of Dooms! guest-starring Phantom Stranger. Note the Whitman variant cover. Note how, much as I can understand a good deal of collector mentality, I could never grasp why anyone gives a hoot about Whitman variants.

I have never been fond of Phantom Stranger, largely because in most books he is used as an all-purpose, no explanations needed solution to whatever dilemma the plot had spent all its time working on. And that does happen in the flat ending of this featuring the heroic pair battle Kaluu, a voodoo crimelord.

But the heart of the story has a powerful scene that overshadows the weak ending. When Kaluu forces an important trial witness to go mute, Batman tries to be more frightening than the voodoo man, but realizes that frightening the witness was wrong and, instead, instills him with the confidence to resist the voodoo spell. It’s a powerful scene of a hero realizing that the ends don’t justify the means.

There’s some fun to be found in this story too.

I am not the kind of guy who would deny you a chance to see Batman namedrop Woody Allen.

Nor would I deny you the chance to see a voodoo zombie wearing polka dot undies battle Batman.